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Asking for a date of birth (2013)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jjgreen 4y ago(2013)
- Overtonwindow 4y agoIn the three button design, what about splitting the year? For example 19/20 0-9/0-9 You wouldn't have to list off all of the years, and no typing which could be helpful for people with disability or mobility concerns.
- mihaic 4y agoOne thing I always felt was an anti-pattern was in any input where months are numbers they don't explicitly mention in an adjacent label the name of the month. Besides the US/UK order confusion, you'd be surprised how often people think August is the 7th month of the year.
- tehlike 4y agoMust be software engineers.
- blitzar 4y agoI have to take off a shoe when it gets to the tail end months of the year.
- drewzero1 4y agoOnly two that don't fit on fingers, so you could leave your shoes on and count feet for November and December. :)
- blitzar 4y agowell well, I think you might be on to something. This is going to save me quite a lot of time, not to mention that I might be able to go back to wearing shoes with laces again and not having my productivity totally destroyed.
- zarzavat 4y agoIt depends on what the date input is for. If it’s for e.g. a credit card expiry date, then the date is already in numbers, so you may have the August=7 mental conversion errors but in the other direction.
- jcstauffer 4y agoWhen I registered for Lufthansa FF, the form was just numbers. My birthdate has two single-digit numbers in it, and I ended up with Month-Date backwards (US vs. rest of the world conventions - e.g., 4/8 is either April 8, or Aug 4). It wasn't an issue, but a minor annoyance to fix it every time I traveled, so that it matched my travel documents. Until a couple of years ago, when I was traveling back from Germany and the flight crew thought it would be nice to surprise me with a bottle of champagne at midnight on my "birthday". They were so proud of doing this over the top "random kindness" (it was pretty thoughtful), and couldn't figure out why I was confused and annoyed. I still feel bad for not acting more excited or grateful...
- hbn 4y agoThere's an unspoken privilege in being born on a day beyond the 12th of any given month, because you'll get a validation error if you mix up the day and month in a form
- pphysch 4y agoEven better, just have the same value for each
- scoot 4y agoYup. 11/11 for me. Can't go to far wrong. Just wish I was born in 2011 (for reasons other than having the same number!) :)
- Lex-2008 4y agooh wow, you don't even need to move your finger when entering digits - it's "one"s all along!
- SnowHill9902 4y agoThere’s a Norwegian joke here.
- madcaptenor 4y agoI was born on December 9. The doctors wanted to do a C-section for my kid on December 9 but I said to my wife that my kid shouldn't have to share a birthday with me, so they scheduled for December 14 instead. This might have been a better argument than not wanting to share.
- user3939382 4y agoI heard a standup with a very dark joke, something to the effect of, 9/11 had a silver lining because now he could remember what number month September was.
- madcaptenor 4y agoI have, occasionally, thought that (for example) October = 8th month because it starts with "Octo". Yes, I know, historically it was.
- FredPret 4y agoThat would be cool. So June would be Hexember, Hexober, or Hexuabry. January would be odd though - Mono-vember.
- madcaptenor 4y agoNot quite - they're off by two. Historically July and August were Quintilis (fifth) and Sextilis (sixth) before they were renamed in terms of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.
- corrral 4y agoConfession: I'm nearly 40 damn years old, and I still second-guess month numbers enough that I usually just count starting from January, ticking them off on my fingers, and going through them one by one, to reach the one I need.
- function_seven 4y agoSame here, but only for July and August! I don't know why, but I can easily map 1-6 to Jan-Jun. And I can easily map 9-12 with Sep-Dec. But July and August always trip me up.
- nishs 4y agoFor me, it's Sep, Oct, (and sometimes Nov) that confuse me.
- gjvnq 4y agoHow about a month dropdown with the options below? Jan01, Fev02, Mar03, Apr04, May05, Jun06, Jul07, Ago08, Sep09, Oct10, Nov11, Dec12
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago> In this design, we use a text field for day, month and year. So far this has tested well, with the main issue being that some people pause and wonder whether to include a leading zero (for example '01' ). Just put it in the example below...
- dsjoblom 4y agoOr just allow both versions (01 or 1). Edit: this works best if the form is validated client-side, otherwise you still get people wondering what is allowed in the field because there is no immediate response to input.
- cabirum 4y agoThat was pretty light on details. Why havent they tested a date picker widget or used native date pickers on ios/android?
- yohannparis 4y agoI will take a wild guess that they try to only use Web APIs that works everywhere and are consistent.
- MikeTaylor 4y agoConsistent for someone who uses the same site on lots of different devices and browsers. I wonder how many of those there are? Not consistent for someone who uses lots of different sites on one device. There are about seven billion of those. "Consistent experience across devices" is not just a waste of time, it's actively harmful.
- dsjoblom 4y agoHave you tried this in practice? It is extremely awkward to pick a date of birth using a regular date picker. It is worse than all the options mentioned in the article. It is only appropriate for picking dates close to the current date.
- ape4 4y agoExcept for babies ;)
- birdman3131 4y agoThe one I have seen that I think was the best is a combo of both. Not a web developer so not sure the actual name but it was a text field that filters. So when you click in the text field it does the year drop down but also accepts standard text input. If you then type in 197 it then only shows 1970-1979 in the drop down.
- DeathArrow 4y agoI would try another approach: use drop-downs but modify the typing behavior, so if you type 12 it selects 12,not 2. That way is easier to use on mobile, faster for all use cases on the desktop.
- hendry 4y agoIt's 2022 and input=date should be used instead for date pickers on the Web. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issues/17 https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issu...
- dividedbyzero 4y agoI find that at least on iOS, selecting a birthdate through that is pretty cumbersome. It's great for dates where you can have a close-ish preset value and where day-of-week matters though.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThe interface looks usually nice, but input=date is horrible to manipulate in many implementations. On iOS choosing year/month is the rolodex interface, as slow and clunky as usual, especially if you’re flipping it for 40~60 years. On android it moves month by month at most, so it’s even funnier to swipe for decades. I think the type=number alternative with validation + confirmation text with the month in letters is a better choice.
- oritsnile 4y agoOn Android you can also click on the year and it should give you a grid view of years
- bouke 4y agoBut how is that easier than just tapping 4 numbers?
- Tepix 4y agoIt depends. Perhaps for blind people tapping 4 numbers isn't so easy.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThanks, I didn’t realize the year on the corner was clickable. On Pixel (android 12), it opens a scrolling list, temporarily replacing the calendar month/day view.
- Terry_Roll 4y agoSo macs appear to be used for testing, handy to know. (D)D/MM(M)/YYYY
- MikeTaylor 4y agoUsually the best solution is not to ask for date of birth. I guess about one in ten of websites that ask me that actually have a legitimate reason for needing to know. (In the present case, a UK Government website might well have a legitimate reason.)
- 13of40 4y agoIf you're verifying (air quotes) something like whether someone is 21, I wonder if it would make better sense to ask the year of their birth, then ask the month and day only if they answered with the year where it mattered. You don't need to be that granular most of the time, so why put people through the hassle?
- bombcar 4y agoIf they really cared, they'd do something more exact than asking for date of birth; it's just a "formality" to comply with some law somewhere.
- viscountchocula 4y agoThe point is that they can easily comply while asking for less pii.
- hyperman1 4y ago21 according to which jurisdiction? Is the USA the only one that counts?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Swenrekcah 4y agoI tried to help my boss once to log onto Zoom for a meeting. The site asked for date of birth, and not wanting to give any PII I naturally entered some bullshit but plausible date. Well Zoom locked him out for some time for trying to lie I guess and that meeting had to be moved to Teams.
- grenoire 4y agoDo note that their new guidelines at https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates/#asking-for-memorable-dates https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates/#asking-... suggest using `type="text" inputmode="numeric"` instead of `type="number"`.
- moron4hire 4y agoWhat does that do? Allow letters to be input in the field, but show a numeric keyboard on touchscreens? Wy would you do that?
- joelanman 4y agowe have a blog post on why: https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-design-system-team-changed-the-input-type-for-numbers/ https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-des...
- nishs 4y agoI've seen some US government forms use [01] [Jan] [1970] where [01]: one- or two-digit day, typed manually [Jan]: three-letter month, picked from a dropdown [1970]: four-digit year, typed manually I think this is a good (the best?) presentation. By using a manual day entry instead of providing a dropdown, as the programmer you can avoid requiring client-side logic to restrict the number of days displayed in the dropdown based on the chosen month and year (e.g. 31 for Jan., 28/29 for Feb., etc.). Having the month represented in letters, not numbers, minimizes the chances of user confusion between `dd-mm` and `mm-dd` presentations. The year presentation matches the one in the OP article.
- SnowHill9902 4y agoIt is. It’s the military format.
- Tepix 4y ago> I think this is a good (the best?) presentation. I don't think so. It has problems with i18n. For example, the abbreviation for December is "Dic" in spanish and "Dez" in German, not "Dec" as in english.
- nishs 4y agoThe twelve month names for the month dropdown could be localized, unless I'm missing something. The entries don't necessarily have to each be three characters; they can be longer if the localization requires it.
- rapind 4y agoDOB should always be a typed input, all numeric. People know exactly what to enter (the number of their month), have done it before many times (DMV etc.), and will knock it out faster than some ridiculous drop down over complicating the process. For other dates though maybe, since most wouldn't have all month numbers memorized, but I’d still say typed, only with a variation on month name (you should be able to parse both abbreviated and full, so long as you know their locale) is better all the time.
- durnygbur 4y agoThe dozenade 2000-2012 will surely make many people confused and many badly designed UIs will let incorrect date to slip through. Myself have one date from this range on one of the documents and have to check twice every time I need to enter somewhere this date.
- madcaptenor 4y agoyou're off by one, that's a trizenade
- needle0 4y agoDifferent cultures have different standards for ordering day, month, and year. Encountering one that you're not used to throws you off quite hard, especially regarding day & month since they're both often two digits. Relying on input=date would probably abstract that away at the client side, but as people said, browser support for it still seems to be bad.
- silveira 4y agoWhat really bothers me is that most of time when the date of birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than N years old? [Yes] or [No]". For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I have already answered hundred of times. So does Steam and many other websites. Is this a by-product of some compliance or self-regulatory requirement like ESRB? If not, it would make much more sense to just ask a yes/no question for the age criteria. Usually this argument is answered with "what about fraud?". Well, asking the birthday is no guarantee at all that the birthday is correct. It only adds friction. As a small revenge I always use an absurdly old birth date on these forms. This way if they are collecting this data, my input will be discarded or pollute their datasets.
- BFay 4y agoI also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes it actually works!
- thescriptkiddie 4y agoI always go for January 1st, 1970. It is (nearly) always accepted on the form because it is a perfectly valid date to be born, but I like to imagine that some analyst is pulling their hair out thinking they have a null coalescing bug.
- Tepix 4y ago1970-01-01 is the way to go! The more, the merrier...
- function_seven 4y agoMy favorite irritating date is "1969-12-31" because now I know I have 2 problems: the coalescing bug and a timezone issue. :)
- 4y ago
- joelanman 4y agoauthor here, just to note our current design pattern for this is slightly updated: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/
- Aachen 4y agoVery cool to see author responses on an article from 2013! I was wondering why you chose to use the placeholder attribute to show labels rather than the (afaik recommended) usage of showing example values. The form shows example values, but outside the input fields. Did you test both ways and this turned out to be better after all, or this was just an implementation which worked fine in testing so it stuck?
- joelanman 4y agoI think I just didn't realise how poor placeholders are in general at that point, compared to just having visible labels/examples. Placeholders disappear when you start typing and have poor contrast
- rougka 4y agoUK gov development is very impressive when I compare it to the government websites here which have a distinct 90’s scent. Both in open source projects and these design blogs. Seems like a highly professional software organization
- Daimanta 4y agoInterestingly, some people have administrative birthdays were they are born on an uncertain day of the month which is registered as day 0. So, somebody could be born the 0th of june 1950. If there is even less information available the same goes for the month of the year. I have seen passports where people are born on 0-0-1970 Must be a frustrating situation in many software systems.
- protomyth 4y agoSaw one site that had buttons for the decade (e.g. 1960's) that turned into a group of ten year buttons (e.g. 1960, 1961) and a back button. Thought it was a bit faster than the standard drop down. Month / Day did the same thing. Wish I remembered where it was, might have been some conference registration site.
- dusted 4y agoAnd then there's me. Birthday (yyyymmdd): I'll argue that there's a nontrivial overlap between the users who fail to do this correctly, and those that would cause me support related grief later.